Minutes:
1. The Chairman introduced the item by explaining that all Cabinet Committees had been asked to adopt a new regular item of business under which they would have an opportunity to discuss and comment on current contracts relating to the services within their respective remits. Committees were being asked to consider how they wished to approach and organise this new activity.
2. In discussing the issue, Members contributed the following comments and views:
a) it would be impossible to look at all contracts; two or three could be selected at a time for detailed scrutiny;
b) there may not be a report to every meeting, only when a particular contract was of concern;
c) the basic need would be to establish if a contract were working properly, and if not, why not, and what could be done to address problems. It would be vital to seek officers’ help in identifying this;
d) if a contract were identified for scrutiny at the next meeting, it would be difficult for the committee to read about it in sufficient depth in the week between publishing the agenda papers and attending the meeting to discuss it;
e) it was not desired that the committee would hold additional meetings to accommodate contract management activity, but to look at things properly it was likely that meetings would become longer, perhaps with committee business in the morning and contract management discussion in the afternoon;
f) it may be that discussion of contracts would need to take place in a closed session. The depth of detail covered and the nature of the discussion would determine this;
g) transparency was important but to discuss issues properly, such discussion would have to take place in a closed session;
h) the committee may not need to see actual contract documents; it would just need to have access to the regular monitoring activity undertaken to measure performance and outcomes, and would need to understand what the performance measures were for each contract;
i) if the committee wished to dig deeper than this, a working group could be established to look at contracts in depth. The work of this group would depend on the issues identified and would allow more scope than having a restricted report to a committee meeting;
j) a working group would comprise only three or four members. It would be better if the whole committee had an opportunity to discuss a contract and come to a view on it;
k) it was essential that a working group had officer support as officers would know the detail of service delivery. The working group could make site visits to see service delivery at first hand and would then report back to the committee. Previously, Select Committees had tried a ‘rapporteur’ approach to information gathering, in which one Member would visit a site alone and make a report back to the committee, but some Members had not been comfortable with this solo working and would prefer officer support;
l) a summary of each contract could be prepared, perhaps just one A4 sheet, setting out basic information, such as the contract holder and the requirements of the contract.
3. Mr Ireland pointed out the very large number of contracts currently relating to health and social care service delivery, with a wide range of values. The committee would need to identify which of these it wished to look at, by perhaps identifying a threshold value or minimum geographical spread for contracts to be examined. He suggested that a register of contracts, summarising their purpose and value, would help the committee to identify this, and offered to supply this to the committee’s October meeting. Mr Lobban added that the County Council let a number of generic contracts to a wide number of different contractors across the county. Members would need to be clear of the extent to which they wanted to look at a contract and the extent to which they wanted to look at a contractor.
m) the Commissioning Advisory Board looked at proposed contracts above a £1m threshold, before procurement, whereas the committee’s role would be to monitor the performance of contracts, after procurement. This could be done most effectively when a contract had been running for six or twelve months. However, officers would already be undertaking this monitoring using standard Kent Performance Indicators (KPIs), as part of their role as commissioners. The committee could then take an overall view of any persistent under-performance. It could also take advantage of local Members’ local knowledge;
n) the committee did not have legal or specialist knowledge so would always need to have the most knowledgeable officers present during any discussion of contract detail;
o) Members trusted officers, who would monitor the performance of contracts and contractors, and it was expected that any problem would have been identified by officers and would be dealt with promptly. For any service delivery problems identified in media coverage, Members would need to receive a very prompt briefing by officers so they would be well informed and able to comment locally, if required to;
p) some Members were nervous of labelling anything on any list of contract performance with a red RAG rating; perhaps a ‘double-amber’ could be used instead. Mr Scott-Clark advised that, in reporting the RAG ratings, it was important to be honest about performance and identify problems where these existed; and
q) the committee‘s contract monitoring work could result in it making a recommendation which would inform the next round of procurement.
4. RESOLVED that comments and views on the committee’s emerging new role be noted, with thanks.